Vienna with Cathy

VIENNA: I met Cathy Zimmermann in Berlin this summer during Berlin Fashion Week. We started talking about Vienna, where she comes from and she really inspired me to come to Vienna soon. I invited her to share all her personal tips with you and me, and if you have a chance you should spend a weekend in the city. Cathy Zimmermann works as a presenter and knows the city inside out.

1) Event: The “FASHION check-in (FCI)” on October 10, 2014. Designer shopping & international flair in the Club Hotel Le Meridien. Shopping in boutique rooms on all hotel floors, fashion shows and after-shopping party with special guests like Boy George, Louis Osbourne, Milli Vanilli, with national and international brands. The Le Meridien was recently selected by Harper’s Bazaar among the best art hotels in Europe.

2) Fashion: Designer Elke Freytag, Austrian designer of the eponymous label. In the photos I am wearing her dresses. Elke is also one of the designers who exhibited at the upcoming FCI on the 8th floor of Le Méridien.

3) Food: The Motto am Fluss is my absolute favourite place, the place to be. The location of the restaurant / cafe on the moorings at the Danube Canal is fantastic, the interior in the style of 50s Venice great and the food amazing. It’s all organic, AND they bake their own La Marianne bread there. I usually indulge myself mostly in the cafe on the terrace with the “Motto steak sandwich” with avocado, caramelized onion, rare roast sirloin and a fantastic cheese-mustard sauce. Wonderful! I think IRMA would like it there and I would recommend a delicious basil-lime soda in pink.

4) Dance / Bar: Volksgarten, a mega cult club, which is one of the most famous worldwide. It includes club and portico, both indoors and outdoors. I prefer to visit the House events on Saturday. The mood is always cheerful, the DJs are great and the pool is a nice eye-catcher. Top!

5) Beauty: At perfumery Le Dix Neuf there are no mainstream scents, so everything is very special and exclusive with real perfume oils. There are English, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and of course Austrian fragrances. The cheapest perfume costs about 100 euros. The most expensive phial is 700 euros. This one scent of Clive Christian is also available, beautifully embedded in a casket made of gold and diamonds for around 4000 euros.

Another special you can actually get hold of there is „Not a perfume“ by Juliette has a gun. As the name implies, no perfume, but a scent, a neurotransmitter (pheromones), let’s say a kind of aphrodisiac. I’ve tried it immediately.